Procurement teams are feeling the pressure like never before. Tariff uncertainty, cost inflation and supplier volatility are combining with internal challenges – smaller teams, tough competition for talent and disconnected systems – to make an already demanding job even harder.
Together, these pressures are not only stretching resources to their limit and creating significant strain for procurement professionals, but are making commercial relationships far more complex.
Misaligned expectations, changing requirements, poorly drafted documentation and payment delays are all becoming increasingly likely to spiral into disputes, which themselves are becoming more common, more expensive and slower to resolve than many professionals would like to think.
In fact, according to a recent survey – conducted as part of Resolutiion and the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS)’s Breaking the Deadlock report – 48% of respondents said the time to resolve procurement conflict and disputes is increasing. More specifically, 49% said that serious conflicts and disputes were taking up to six months to resolve and, in extreme cases, 13% indicated that it is taking more than six months to reach a conclusion to disagreements.
Exacerbating the issue are the costs associated with resolving conflicts – from a financial, resource, and reputational perspective – which 73% said were on the up. A separate report published earlier this year from Resolutiion and World Commerce and Contracting (WCC) also estimated that the direct costs and publicly available data alone amounted to £671 billion ($900 billion).
While these challenges are enough to contend with alone, they are also seeing organisations rely on ad-hoc approaches rather than structured processes. In fact, many organisations currently only bring in legal help sparingly, which suggests there isn’t always a formal escalation path or decision rule, with procurement managers relying on personal judgment or internal politics to decide how to handle a dispute. This approach is one that’s only further delaying resolutions, straining supplier relationships even more, and causing additional operational disruption that is completely avoidable.
Top strategies for improving conflict and dispute outcomes
The above findings may, on the surface, seem negative; relationships that are quietly consuming time and trust, ultimately impacting businesses’ bottom lines. But they also signal a clear opportunity for procurement professionals to rethink how they approach conflict and dispute management, in turn enhancing their resolution capabilities.
With this in mind, consider the following strategies:
- Strengthen documentation clarity and upfront alignment: Put simply, better delivery documentation (not just contracts, but all documentation that governs the relationship) makes for less conflict and fewer disputes. So, consider how to make contract terms clear from the outset, defining deliverables and expectations upfront, and holding a clarification meeting after signing the contract. In doing so, organisations can pre-empt a large portion of conflict and disputes caused by misunderstandings.
- Prioritise communication and supplier relationship management: Support a culture of ‘no surprises’ via regular check-ins, performance reviews, and putting early warning systems in place for potential issues. This can not only improve the ongoing dialogue with suppliers and internal stakeholders throughout the lifecycle of the relationship, but stop disagreements from escalating and reduce the frequency of conflicts and disputes.
- Switch ad-hoc case handling to a more structured framework: By establishing a clear multi-tier resolution process (e.g. initial negotiation > management escalation > intervention), companies can handle conflict and disputes at the lowest appropriate level, saving time, money, improving efficiency and collecting data at each stage.
- Leverage available data: Following on from the above strategy’s reference to data collection, don’t just collect data, use it. Modern procurement systems generate vast amounts of data: on delivery times, quality issues, change orders, communications, etc. By applying analytics or AI, organisations can spot patterns or red flags (for example, a trend of late deliveries or increasing change requests in a project) that typically precede a dispute. Some forward-looking organisations are even beginning to implement predictive analytics on supplier performance data. Even without advanced technology, organisations can still track basic metrics to understand where conflict and disputes occur most often if a simple register is maintained.
- Build conflict and dispute resolution into leadership and organisational culture: Conflict and dispute resolution objectives should be integrated into development plans, competency models, and performance evaluations for them to work most effectively. That means treating them in the same way you would other key metrics – for example, by celebrating examples of effective resolution like you would for cost savings being delivered or successful tenders.
- Improve access to specialist expertise in a cost-effective way: Make specialist conflict and dispute resolution expertise more accessible as a built-in support for procurement. By lowering the barriers (time, cost, bureaucracy) to engage expert technology, companies can leverage their benefits with greater ease. Additionally, training internal procurement staff in negotiation and conflict management can raise the overall skill level.
The bottom line here is that now is the moment to act – procurement conflict and dispute resolution must move from the margins to the mainstream of operational strategy. As 2026 approaches, commercial relationships are only set to become more complex and supply chains more interdependent; a trend that will see the ability to navigate disagreements constructively become a hallmark of high-performing organisations.
Written by Fayola-Maria Jack, Founder, Resolutiion. Resolutiion® is a human-centred global AI platform, purpose-built to help buyers and suppliers prevent, manage, and resolve commercial conflicts and disputes, with speed and precision.